Transient growth in stable collisionless plasma
- Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS (United Kingdom)
- University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, CNRS, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, B.P. 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4 (France)
The first kinetic study of transient growth for a collisionless homogeneous Maxwellian plasma in a uniform magnetic field is presented. A system which is linearly stable may display transient growth if the linear operator describing its evolution is non-normal so that its eigenvectors are nonorthogonal. In order to include plasma kinetic effects, a Landau fluid model is employed. The linear operator of the model is shown to be non-normal and the results suggest that the non-normality of a collisionless plasma is intrinsically related to its kinetic nature, with the transient growth being more accentuated for smaller scales and higher plasma beta. The results based on linear spectral theory have been confirmed with nonlinear simulations.
- OSTI ID:
- 21274155
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 16, Issue 3; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3094759; (c) 2009 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
IMPLICATIONS OF A NON-MODAL LINEAR THEORY FOR THE MARGINAL STABILITY STATE AND THE DISSIPATION OF FLUCTUATIONS IN THE SOLAR WIND
Kinetic-magnetohydrodynamic description of longitudinal sound waves in a collisionless, quasineutral plasma